“Hello?” I called eventually. “You guys are making this difficult for me on purpose, aren’t you?”
No answer.
I wanted to stick close to the lantern because the shadows got really big and dark the farther from it I went, but I had no other choice. They had definitely made use of my counting all the way to fifty, and they must have gone to hide near the edges of the junkyard.
That’s where I went, too.
The shadows stretched with my every step, I swear it. Too long, too twisted. One near a smaller pile of broken gears looked like it had fingers curled at the edge—a perfectly shaped hand on the shadow against the floor. The hand of a timewraith.
Those were bad.Monsterswho fed on time, who could kill you, drain you of all your seconds. They had four fingers on each hand, long and twisted like those very shadows, and once they latched onto you, they were near impossible to shake off.
My fear intensified, even though I reminded myself that I was here, in the Labyrinth, possibly the most protected placein the entire realm, and I wasn’t alone in this barn no matter what it felt like. It was just my mind filling in the blanks with every shadow I saw on the floor or the walls—and I even forced a smile on my face to try to tell myself that I was okay.
Then something hit the floor with a loud thud not two feet behind me, and every second in my body left me in a rush. I didn’t scream only because my vocal cords were frozen.
A monster was in front of me.
All of a sudden, the fear disappeared and my arms rose, and I began to look around for something to use as a weapon. Whatever thisthingwith the square head was, I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The place, the game, everything fell away and my instincts were suddenly sharp as knives, and I had only one thought in my head—fight.
Then the monster spoke.
“Time’s Trousers—I wasthisclose!”
The monster had Reggie’s voice, too.
Everything suddenly came to a halt. I blinked and my arms lowered and I breathed deeply while the monster moved—reached his normal-sized hands up to his large square head, and…took it off.
Then stepped away from the shadows and into the light.
“Reggie.” It was Reggie holding some sort of tin box in his hands—the same box he’d had on his head.
“I hadeverythingprepared. I was going to give you a good scare, then laugh for the rest of the night at how you screamed—but thenthisthing!” And he kicked something made of metal, a square piece I couldn’t identify, but it must have been whatever fell to the floor a moment ago that made me turn.
I closed my eyes. Brought my fingers to the bridge of my nose. Tried not to laugh—I really did.
But when he threw the tin box away at the nearest pile, Reggie lookedso pissed.His hands were on his hips, his foot tapping the floor, his cheeks red—he looked absolutely ridiculous.
My laughter echoed in the tall ceiling even though I was still slightly shaking from the sudden spike of adrenaline in my body. Time’s Teeth, I’d been so scared. A miracle I hadn’t screamed—a true miracle.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He waved his hand at me and turned. “I’ll search this side, you search that.” And he walked away to the other side of the junkyard, leaving me alone.
Not a monster.That’s because there were no monsters here—I wasinside the Labyrinth.
I sighed, shook my head at myself, and the fear didn’t return. Not when the image of Reggie’s face as he pouted kept replaying in front of my eyes. I was going to burst out laughing soon, too, but I went near one of the largest piles of metal in the entire junkyard, when suddenly something grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to the side hard.
Once again, my vocal cords froze. My entire body froze, and I hardly even felt the metal edges on the pile I was shoved against digging into my back.
Red and brown eyes in front of me.
Hands on the sides of my face.
“Did I scare you?”
March’s whisper melted every inch of ice that had suddenly covered me on the inside. Speaking was out of the question still, but I somehow managed to nod.
“I did?” Closer and closer he came, and I was holding onto something made of metal behind me for dear life… “I’ll just have to make it up to you then.”
And he kissed me.
